Swan River councillor Jason Delaurier wants to slap a new 3% tax on booze to help pay for policing in his community.

He says the town’s policing costs are soaring and they need an alternative way to pay for it other than property taxes.

This is not a new push for higher taxes on spirits, wine and beer.

Former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray tried to bring in a municipal booze tax during his failed “new deal” plan to raise taxes by $120 million a year.

The argument behind added taxes on beer and liquor is that many crimes and traffic offences are associated with the consumption of liquor. As a result, those who consume liquor should pay an added tax to help pay for the extra policing demand they’re creating.

We’ll set aside for a moment the massive hole in that argument, namely that most people who consume alcohol are not committing crimes or crashing their cars into poles. Most liquor store patrons are law-abiding citizens.

More importantly, though, Manitobans already pay massive booze taxes every time they buy a bottle of wine, a case of beer or a bottle of spirits. Manitoba Liquor Control Commission taxes the hell out of booze in this province. The tax is called “net-revenues” and it gets transferred to the general revenues of the provincial government.

That’s a tax. And part of those tax dollars are already transferred to municipalities like Winnipeg and Swan River to pay for policing and other municipal services.

That’s the part of this story the town councilor from Swan River doesn’t want to tell his constituents.

For example, MLCC sold $211.7 million worth of spirits in 2011-12, according to its latest annual report.

The cost-of-goods sold on those sales was only $83.7 million.

That’s a staggering mark-up of $128 million, or 153%.

The Crown corporation sold $128 million worth of wine last year. And it only paid $59.3 million for those products.

That’s a mark-up of $68.7 million, or 116%. All told, MLCC marked up its total sales last year by just over 100%.

Even after paying for all of its expenses and overhead, MLCC raised a record $254.2 million in liquor taxes last year.

And that doesn’t include the PST and GST on the booze we buy, either.

So we already pay hefty liquor taxes in this province and we certainly don’t need to pay any more. If the town of Swan River feels it’s being shortchanged by the provincial government on funding transfers, they can take it up with Broadway. Because Manitobans already pay enough taxes and at the end of the day, there is only one taxpayer.

Manitobans just got hit with the largest tax increase in 25 years in this province after the Selinger government expanded the PST, jacked up gas taxes and increased vehicle registration.

I don’t know about Swan River but Winnipeggers also got hammered with a series of tax increases this year, including a hike in property taxes, higher sewer and water rates and a new garbage tax.

Also, Manitoba’s middle and upper-income families now pay the second highest income taxes in the country.

How much more can we pay?

Swan River’s town council may want to consider all of this before they start asking Manitobans to dig even deeper into their pockets to help fund government.

Enough is enough.

Poll

Should Swan River charge an alcohol tax to pay down a hefty RCMP bill?